School Cafeteria Lunch

[Gothampc]

Posted: 2/17/14 at 7:11pm

The pizza thread got me thinking, what was your school cafeteria like? Growing up, ours was always exactly the same and they never changed the day they served the food (maybe it would have confused the cafeteria ladies.)

Monday - Hamburger or hot dog and french fries

Tuesday - Spaghetti with a chunk of buttered bread and a side of lettuce drenched in oil

Wednesday - Grilled cheese and buttered corn

Thursday - Pizza (actually cardboard with tomato sauce) with side of lettuce drenched in oil

Friday - Fish sticks and Tater Tots (dang Catholics and their no meat Fridays!!)

We had a choice of whole milk, skim milk or chocolate milk. And for an extra charge, you could buy an ice cream sandwich or a vanilla cone.

Updated On: 2/17/14 at 07:11 PM

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 2/17/14 at 8:55pm

Brings back memories - some best forgotten.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 2/17/14 at 10:17pm

We got a vanilla cup of Ice ceam with the wooden spoon or whipped jello with a daub of whipped cream, a slab of chocolate cake with white icing or apple betty for dessert. No extra charge. 35 cents!

[Marianne2]

Posted: 2/17/14 at 11:20pm

I think mine changed Mondays through Thursday in elementary school. Friday was always pizza day. There was regular or chocolate milk. Occasionally there was some sort of juice.

High school was a bit different. They had 3 different lines. 1 had whatever gross stuff they were serving from day to day and pizza. The other line you could get a sub made or go to the salad bar. I know you also could get a thing of french fries or tator tots if you didn't want anything else. There was also the line with bagels, chips, and ice cream.

[AllisonBWW]

Posted: 2/17/14 at 11:32pm

My high school had a really good cafeteria. The menu alternated on an 8 week schedule (different food monday to friday - 8 sets, which rotated), and that schedule changed after New Years and in September.

We had great options like healthy soups/salads, usually one meat option (alternated chicken stir fry, chicken drumsticks in a tomato based vegetable sauce (delicious), some beef stir fry, meat cabbage rolls, and other grilled meats). We'd also have a fish option, a pasta and/or rice available as a side, french fires available (they got phased out during my last year, I wasn't complaining). My fave lunch was soup, salad, and stir fry. We did have pizza every day (brought in from Pizza Pizza, the canadian Pizza Hut), and Jamaican meat patties as well. Also - we had Sushi every day which was basically supermarket sushi, but on the good end of the spectrum - and it was actually a nice lunch alternative.

We also had an ice cream selection. (Yes, the Oreo ice cream sandwich!)

Lunch was expensive though. I bought lunch 2 or 3 times a week. I didn't get into Chocolate milk until my first year of University.

[bobs3]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 3:05am

The hamburger was some kind of thin meat patty mixed with filler (maybe soy or buckwheat?) served on a thin bun with a spoonful of ketchup on the side (I think that was considered the vegetable) and crinkle cut french fries that were wet and soggy.

The fish sticks which I never ate were served with tartar sauce on the side (again I think that was considered the vegetable) and soggy tater tots.

The pizza was square slices of cardboard crust with orange cheese (Velveeta?) and beef crumbles sprinkled on top.

The spaghetti was bite size pasta with sliced pieces of Vienna sausages with tomato sauce poured over it.

Once in while they would serve something they called roast beef but it was tough and gray and had these weird rainbow colored spots on it. That was same day you would get instant mashed potatoes and canned green beans.

And if memory serves there was always a canned peach slice or pear slice or a syrupy fruit cocktail.

And there was always the big school cafeteria rolls served with a tiny little pat of butter. They were very fluffy, had no taste and were VERY yeasty.



Updated On: 2/18/14 at 03:05 AM

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 6:49am

All I recall was that in elementary and middle school, every Friday was pizza and the option for chocolate milk. Other than that, the menu was fairly routine in rotation...

When I started high school, our district had recently renovated the existing high schools and opened new ones. Small town, so we are only talking a handful of schools. We had far great option there. You could get the standard school lunch in a standard school lunch line, but there were several kiosks around the cafeteria, each offering a different type of food, sold a la carte, as well as a "to go" kiosk outside on a plaza near the student parking lot that served a general assortment of food. Sophomore, juniors and seniors also had "open campus" lunch, where we could leave campus for lunch period and go to nearby restaurants or even home, if you lives close to the school. It was VERY common to see many carpools of students at the drive thru fast food spots or one of the local eateries by our campus.

[bobs3]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 9:57am

When I moved away to college and discovered the college dining hall -- all you could eat for one price I was amazed and yes I gained the Freshman 15. In single room they had the grill (burgers, hot dogs, chicken, french fries, etc.), the sandwich station, the salad bar, the soup bar, the pizza station, and of course, the dessert station.

[madbrian]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 10:04am

Like many others, our cafeteria sold those Linden's Chocolate Chip cookies.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 10:22am

Ugh. Boarding school food--supplied by Sysco.

I will remember the phrase "partially de-fatted fatty beef patties" as long as I live...

[best12bars]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 10:23am

Shady Sadie (Shady Sadie)
serving lady (serving lady)
Don't pay her no mind, no
She'll take ev'ry dime
She's got a one-a-day lunch,
good for all the bunch, yeah.

HOT LUNCH, YEEAAHHH.

Macaroni and baloni, tuna fish, our favorite dish. Hot lunch, hey
If it's yellow, then it's jello.If it's blue,it could be stew, oo, oo.

She's got a one-a-day lunch,
good for all the bunch,hey now.

Hot,hot lunch, oh,oh,no
Yeah.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 10:43am

^ Y'know HOT LUNCH JAM from "Fame" was the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw this thread.

I'm a product of the New York City Public School system...make of that what you will.

[JerseyGirl2]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 12:12pm

A bowl of chili with a cinnamon roll as big as your head.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 2:08pm

I don't remember them having a set meal for a set day, but I do remember a LOT of tater tots.

[Marianne2]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 2:25pm

Now that I remember, the Catholic school that 2 of my sisters went to for awhile had an interesting cafeteria. I know some days they had food ordered in from local restaurants. I mean, I think you had to send your lunch order form in once a month versus at the public schools where you had to order daily. I also recall there was like 1 person in charge there who I think got paid and they called in parent volunteers to prepare some stuff occasionally and serve. I think my mom did that sometimes.

[CJR]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 3:08pm

My catholic elementary school was so small that everyone had to bring their own lunches all week, although we always had free milk delivery. On friday's we had pizza delivered from the neighborhood pizzeria (which is STILL my favorite). You brought in your pizza money - $1 a slice and by class, you lined up to go to the end of the hall and get your pizza from the moms (and always my dad) who volunteered that week to hand it out. And on friday's you ate in your classroom, not the cafeteria. As I got older though, they added hot dog thursdays. $1 for a turkey dog or $1.50 for one with chili.

I remember the cafeteria food in middle school (public school for middle and high school) being RANK and it changed every week. I brought my lunch a lot.

Our high school had a LOT of options (including subway sandwiches and domino's pizza) and a smaller "snack" window where you could always get bagels with cream cheese. But, we also had an open campus for seniors so if you wanted to leave and go to the deli, you could.

Updated On: 2/18/14 at 03:08 PM

[FishermanBob]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 4:32pm

Such horrible memories of school lunches. Filet Mignon that was grain feed, not grass fed, lobster that was previously frozen and not flown in live from Maine, shrimp cocktails that used 13-15 size and not the U8s like everyone else and that sardonic bastard who used to carve the steamship rounds of roast beef and would never slice it thick enough. God, what horrible memories.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 4:41pm

Ungrateful brats all of you!!

[bobs3]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 9:48am

Oh, I forgot to mention when they had "Mexican Day". They served Tamale Pie which was canned Sloppy Joe mix poured over Frito's corn chips, a tiny piece of cornbread, canned refried beans, and some kind of custard onto which they poured canned caramel sauce and called it Flan.

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 9:52am

A local Italian food shop actually supplied sandwiches to my Jr/Hi School cafeteria - so having a Sorrento's sub was actually a great lunch.

But, those damn cinnamon roles they had at the 10:15 break - made the crap offered by Cinabon look tiny - and I am sure they caused a few diabetic outbreaks. Warm and full of sugared frosting goo - amazingly good and disgusting at the same time - I think if I had one now I might just go into a diabetic coma.

[Marianne2]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 11:49am

I just remembered something else from my high school. I'm not sure how we go away with this one. But, they also served giant cookies. And in the mornings before classes started they had the cafeteria open for buying food. At least when I was in 7th grade we could request to buy cookie dough. So, we were able to buy a scoop of raw cookie dough. I think they stopped selling it after that. Makes sense. But, it was so good.

[dreaming]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 12:08pm

My public school cafeteria food was positively disgusting-chicken patty on a roll with tater tots, some soggy lettuce with oil on it and fruit cup (the canned, sugary kind), and we also had 'breakfast for lunch' which was a ride on the carb and cholesterol express (pancakes with syrup, greasy bacon and sausage-and they gave you BOTH), plus more of the sugary fruit cup, toast with butter...you get the picture
We also had nasty fish sticks and fish patties (I got sick on them-wouldn't touch them after that), tater tots, etc.

And the veggies were covered in either oil or butter. Just a heart attack waiting to happen. No wonder I preferred bringing my own lunch. (They had cheese pizza on Fridays, too-that was more bearable. But the school also liked to make money through the sales of ice cream and candy, which really was a bad idea from a nutritional standpoint.)

[StockardFan]

Posted: 2/19/14 at 11:17pm

I liked some of our cafeteria food. Other things not so much. In HS we had a salad bar as well as the hot meals. Oh and you could also buy lemonade and chocolate milkshakes.

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 12:20am

Oh, one year I was part of a student focus group at the end of the school year where they had about 100 students to talk about likes, dislikes, what was doing well withs students, what wasn't and try a few new things.. of course, it was all for local press and not a thing changed.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 2/20/14 at 9:06pm

From time-to-time I sub in the local high school. The cafeteria makes sandwiches and wraps in the spot with Boars Head meats, freshly made salads and soups, lots of fresh fruits and a variety of drinks. Not a bad deal at all.